This is my last direct blog post to Live Journal. I'm keeping the free account up to read my friends who haven't left.

You can find me over at Insanejournal, same handle as ever. If you've got a journal over there, please let me know in the comments to this post.

Hopefully in the next few days I'll set up a RSS feed from IJ to here.So it seems I can't syndicate my InsaneJournal to here without paying 6A for the privilege. So here's a simple hack:My Insanejournal RSS is at:http://www.insanejournal.com/users/catvincent/data/rss/Use whichever RSS reader you like, and if you feel drawn to comment just pop on over.

Mac user instructions (and a command-line ap) for copying your LJ posts (complete with comments can't copy comments over due to limitations at LJ's end. Buggerit.) over to Insane Journal can be found here. I had to run it four or five times before all my stuff copied, but it works eventually.

Brin on the possible memewar once the People of the Book have got all that macho shit out of their systems. Long, smart, worth considering.

A quote:

"How will Earthlings, who are eager to get on with planetary -- and interplanetary -- life, settle their issues, allocate resources, and generally handle the problems of running a complex civilization?

The crux: with the fading of both the empires of paranoia and male frenzy, we’ll be left with an East-West dichotomy ... one that ought to be settled peacefully, since both of these final “sides” recognize the inefficiency and cost and inherent uncertainty of violence.

Non-violence sounds great, for a change. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be a struggle. Because a whole lot will be at stake. In fact, just about everything....

...if the Chinese leadership clade does succeed at translating Lee Kwan Yew’s method into a successfully stable mode for a billion and a half Chinese, then humanity will be offered a genuinely interesting choice, by mid-century. On the one hand, the very best version of oldstyle, oligarchy-led governance possible.

On the other hand, Earth citizens will be offered an updated version of the Western Enlightenment. One that has weathered the trials of a Cold War, a Machismo Meme War, and (we can hope) a successful self renewal, after years of despoliation by the recent Neoconservative Putsch."

Scalzi, in the midst of reaming out another PC idiot who tut-tuts about the horrible influence of Heinlein on modern SF, perfectly sums up the difference between creators of 'literary' fiction and writers of SF, thus:

"People start writing literary fiction as they tumble through writing programs at Sarah Lawrence or Bennington or Iowa because that’s what they’re expected to write and they want to impress their professors and fellow students; people start writing science fiction, on the other hand, roughly ten seconds after they set down The Star Beast or Ender’s Game or Snow Crash because they get done with the book and think, holy crap, I want to do that. Academia generally wants you to show you can write; science fiction generally wants you to tell a story. "

Nice.And don't get me started on lit-fic wrters who steal SF ideas and claim they're not doing SF but something *better*...

Fascinating article about ol' William Lee and his ideas, found via Signs of Witness:

One key idea - which I'd forgotten, as I last read Nova Express in my teens - is that of the Johnsons, who article author Robert Guffey defines thus:

' Burroughs’s libertarian brand of morality was based on Jack Black’s notions of the “Johnson family” as chronicled in Black’s 1926 autobiography You Can’t Win. The impact this book had on Burroughs when he was still a young man can’t be overestimated. In Burroughs’s own words, the Johnson creed can be described as follows:

“The Johnson family” was a turn-of-the-century expression to designate good bums and thieves. It was elaborated into a code of conduct. A Johnson honours his obligations. His word is good and he is a good man to do business with. A Johnson minds his own business. He is not a snoopy, self-righteous, troublemaking person. A Johnson will give help when help is needed. He will not stand by while someone is drowning or trapped under a burning car.

Surely in Burroughs’s world this would be the only mandatory social stricture established for his personal temporary autonomous zone. '

The Johnson's philosophy/approach to life is something I've tried to pin down for years... and usually I reduce it down to 'giving a fuck'. I see it as a pretty good basis for moral conduct - and it seems to be the common factor in everyone I love and admire. The absence of it also seems to be the prime characteristic of all those I hate and fear (and is roughly equivalent with the Right Man/Violent Male psychosis noted by AE van Vogt and Colin Wilson - the inability to admit ever being wrong, meaning that all who suggest this possibility are enemies. By definition, the Right Man doesn't give a fuck about anyone but his sycophants - and treats those as inferiors too).

There's been talk about devices that can beam sound specifically to an individual for years - Fortean Times ran articles on it at least five years back - but an actual (non-classified) gizmo is now revealed:

' After years of reading puff pieces about the coming of the “Hypersonic Soundbeam,” a device designed to send targeted blasts of sound waves that can be heard only be selected recipients in an audio environment, it has apparently made its debut in the public sphere, right here in New York. As part of a billboard marketing campaign for a television show. A&E has placed a billboard (on Prince St. between Mulberry and Mott) that shoots sound waves designed to resonate against your head, giving the passerby a distinct feeling that the advertisement is arising from within their skull. '

Just think of the fun covert ops teams could have with this. Or governments. Hell, the fact that the first aboveground use is for advertising is bad enough.

"...the new Serenity comics series that is due out in March. This three-issue series, Serenity: Better Days, is a step back in time to the early years of the Firefly crew, and the fledgling gang's turbulent attempts to cope with success after they pull off their first successful heist. It features the same creative team as Those Left Behind, with the story by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, and Adam Hughes providing all three covers this time."

And... Fruity Oaty Bars lunchboxes! 'cos they go so well with a brown coat and all...

The beginning of the end of the Anglican/Episcopalian church? Hope so. Divide and conquer, I say! I also note that the gutless posturing of the Archbishop of Cabterbury did nothing to stop this - probably didn't even delay it much. Perhaps if he'd had the balls to stand against homophobia, he'd be remembered as a man of conscience rather than a twat.

" We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole — or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked — at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so — whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.

A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself."